I have a backlog of Fathers Day postings, which have been impeded by the labors of contracting my belongings into a small space. A process that unearthed reminders of my dad. In more or less reverse order: the original Arnold M. Zwicky on vacation; the nameplate from his desk at work (as a public health officer); and plates from a wonderful wildflower book he picked up in Switzerland in his youth.

Comics and cartoons pile up. Here are four recent ones from my regular feeds, plus a Perry Bible Fellowship (“The Offenders”) sent to me by Jason Parker-Burlingham. Before that, a Bizarro with the slow-snail cartoon meme; a One Big Happy with an attachment ambiguity; a Rhymes With Orange on reduplicated names (like mahi-mahi); and a massively alliterative Zippy.

(#1)

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbol in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there’s just one in this strip — see this Page.)

The usual meme is about snails (with shells), but it works equally well for slugs (without shells).

(#2)

Simplifying the example, it’s I sketched a model in the nude. There are two scopes for the modifier in the nude — as a sentential (or VP) adverbial (the scoping for clauses with intransitive verbs, like I sunbathed in the nude), attributing nudity to the referent of the subject; or as a modifier within the direct object NP (note the passive A model in the nude was painstakingly sketched by the life drawing class). The first speaker intends the second, narrower scope, but Ruthie understands the first, wider scope, in which the artist is nude.

(#3)

English has a considerable number of names that are reduplicative in form, like the place name Bora Bora. Some of these are food names, like mahi-mahi and couscous. The diner is taking the reduplicative form to denote multiplicity (or extent), giving rise to a kind of back-formed noun, mahi or cous.

(#4)

Bill Griffith loves to play with the sounds of words. Having started with Fairchild Semiconductor (the company name) used as a personal name, the first panel explodes with F alliteration, which continues in the other two panels — pared with T alliteration in the second panel, S alliteration in the third.

And then to cartoon sound words in Perry Bible Fellowship, which range from conventional to inventive:

(#5)

Added later: More important, as commenter RF notes:

Note that Slur’s “problematic” fighting style results in sound effects that are racial slurs directed at his opponents.

This was clearly telegraphed by the name of the strip (“The Offenders”) and by the name of the central character (Slur). Somehow I missed this on a first reading. Many thanks to RF.

(Graphics on gay male subjects, probaby not for kids or the sexually modest, and with little linguistic interest.)

A follow-up to my “Kinsey strip-tease” posting yesterday. I was unable to identify the artist for the graphic there, but (once again) Chuk Craig has done the detective work: illustrator Michael J. DiMotta, who free-lances lots of stuff, but has a special attachment to hunky, barely clad men and other gay male subjects.

The vote was on the 23rd, results announced on the 24th, and by today flamboyant gay pornographer Chuck Tingle has exploited Brexit for queer ends in a 37-page Kindle book (available from Amazon in the U.K.):

More CDs on offer, free (other than shipping expenses) for the asking: two collections of hymns of praise based mostly in folk and gospel traditions: #12, singing in the various shapenote traditions; #13, singing in other traditions (black gospel, white gospel, mountain music early American music, contemporary folk, etc.).

More things you can get free in the mail (well, you pay for shipping): this time, about 40 CD albums of comedy and humor, from Shelley Berman, Beyond the Fringe, Bob and Ray, the Bobs, and the Bonzo Dog Band to Allan Sherman, the Smothers Brothers, the best of This American Life, and the best of Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me (both from public radio in the U.S.).

Only 13 of them, but they come in multiple discs, mostly with librettos, so the package is bulky.

As before, the offer comes as a package, all or nothing: we’re ready to mail out a package for the cost of mailing and no more. If you want the collection, SEND E-MAIL to both me and Kim Darnell (who manages the mailing): arnold.zwicky@gmail.com and drdcrunk.gmail.com . With your postal address. PLEASE PLEASE don’t reply as a Facebook comment or message or a WordPress comment, since this offer is going out in multiple places.

The divestment project continues. In the most recent development, Kim Darnell and I have assembled CDs from four different sources, have begun putting them into (admittedly somewhaty eccentric) categories, alphabetizing them, and checking them against tracks on my iTunes. One small collection is now ready for shipping out. Meanwhile, we uncovered a trove of linguistics media material at Staunton Ct. These will be offers #8 (gay CDs) and #9 (linguistics VHS tapes, DVDs, and a video).